I just registered so I'm a "newbie" even though I've been following bitcoin for almost a year.

A well known issue with the bitcoin protocol is the ever increasing length of the block chain, a copy of which every client maintains, and which contains every transaction since day zero. A possible solution occured to me:

Why not have, after every 10,000 blocks or so, a "totalization" block that sums or totalizes the balance of every bitcoin address that has a non-zero balance (discard addresses that total to zero balance). This block can then be timestamped and hash signed by miners. New regular blocks then continue on after, and are linked to, the totalization block. After some number, perhaps 100 or so, of new blocks the totalization block can be considered validated and all block chain info prior to the totalization block can be discarded. I'll call it "regenesis"! A metaphor to think of is rocket staging on a trip to orbit. The dead weight of older stages are discarded. For block chain length competiton you could accept the chain with the earliest totalization block with the longest chain of following blocks (but not more than 10,000). I'm sure there are issues to work out, but the idea seems sound to me.

Bitcoin mining is now a specialized and very risky industry, just like gold mining. Amateur miners are unlikely to make much money, and may even lose money. Bitcoin is much more than just mining, though!

Advertised sites are not endorsed by the Bitcoin Forum. They may be unsafe, untrustworthy, or illegal in your jurisdiction. Advertise here.

So glad to hear there is a solution! I think the blockchain is like 2GB now? I was thinking, when all the bitcoins are released it would be like 10GB and beyond, but I'm sure you guys are hard at work preventing wasted disk space!

But it should be very clear that even with pruning, the blockchain will be big. It won't fit on a smartphone, and possibly not on a desktop PC. End-users will use Simplified Payment Verification or other solutions.

Creating a summary won't save any meaningful amount of space compared to pruning the blockchain and opens the chain up to some new attack vectors.

I hazard to make a prediction that no new "summary" blocks will ever be used.

Pruning can cut down the size of the blockchain by ~75% but that this means the blockchain will be rather large. As the number of users and active addresses grows it will only grow and a summary won't reduce the size more than pruning will.

A pruned blockchain contains all the unspent outs in blockchain format. Summary simply consolidates them into the same block (a huge computational task both for creation and verification). The same amount of information is still present.

light clients will be the solution for most end users going forward. Bitcoin enthusiasts, miners, pools, exchanges, major mechants, and possibly even banks will form the backbone of full nodes.

Satoshi paper should be require reading before anyone is able to proposea) a fatal flaw or attack on the networkb) some defense against a fatal flaw (likely worse than the non-existent "fatal" flaw)c) some desperately needed breaking protocol change